What to Read in Investing? Lesson from A 2,000-Year-Old Stoic Philosopher

I have lost count of how many investors have told me over the years that they never read anything apart from newspapers. They’re too busy to read books or even long articles, they say.

In fact, most people I’ve encountered read very little (despite the fact that, as per a study, an average Indian reads the most in the world, at around 90 minutes per day, as compared to 68 minutes of an average Chinese and 48 minutes of an average American).

Anyways, when people ask me what they should read to improve their investment thinking and/or to stay informed on the stock market, businesses, etc. and/or to just become better thinkers and decision makers, the first thing I ask them to do is to avoid reading newspapers (the law of inversion, you see, of what not do).

Then, if they are still interested, I tell them if they care less about signaling intelligence and connectedness, and more about understanding, then they should consider reading more and more things moving towards the Enduring side of my reading spectrum, instead of spending precious time on what’s Ephemeral –

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Anyways, I recently found strong support for my thoughts on reading and re-reading the super-texts in one of the greatest philosophers the world has seen, Seneca.

Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. He was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, and was forced to commit suicide for alleged involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Nero (though some sources state that he may have been innocent).

During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

Over to Seneca.

On Discursiveness in Reading

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

At the end of this very letter, Seneca also shared his thoughts on the limits of one’s wealth. He wrote –

Epicurus says: “Contented poverty is an honourable estate.” Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?

Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.

From Seneca to Sherlock
As I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the supertexts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Don’t Read…Reread
Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita tells us –

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it.

When we read a book for the first time, the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. Only on a third or fourth reading do we start behaving toward a book as we would toward a painting, holding it all in the mind at once.

To bring back Seneca and what he wrote to Lucilius –

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

While it’s a good idea to read stuff across domains and authors, if you are unsure of what to start and where to focus your intellectual capacities on, consider the super-texts. Read them once, and then read them again…and again…and you will do just fine.

The idea is to not be in perpetual locomotion and jump from one book or author to another…but to sit back, contemplate, and relate the facts you read to each other.

But start reading if you haven’t already, and start now, or you would miss out on the huge compounding benefits of the same as years pass.

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